New “Pay it Forward” program doesn’t pay off

The high school students that cringe at the thought of having to come up with the money to pay tuition probably don’t know about a new program that has eliminated the tuition fee for college and has exchanged it instead with an interesting alternative.

A program named “Pay It Forward,” also known as the House Bill 3472, was conceived by students and the Oregon Working Families Party and offers free admission to any college  in return for 3 percent of the individual’s future salaries for 20 years, according to the New York Times Upfront magazine.

It definitely is great not to have to stress over payment costs, but this plan will really just emphasize students becoming the biggest procrastinators of their lives.

College tuition is a pain to cover especially since its price has been tremendously rising each year. Tuition has increased 4.2 percent for public four year colleges and 3 percent for public two year colleges over the past 10 years, according to collegeboard.org.

But people feel better once they get things over with and,  in this case, they would feel much better after covering their payment of college immediately instead of postponing it for 20 years.

If students can pay off their entire tuition before entering college by working minor jobs, saving money or constantly looking for scholarships while in their high school years, they won’t have to worry about getting a loan from the bank for college they will have to pay later.

Paying off a loan or one’s tuition from the start of college is one of the many beneficial challenges in life.

One has to work hard to pay off either their tuition cost or loan, and the accomplishment of doing so will feel very rewarding.

With this “Pay It Forward” plan, students won’t have to worry about their tuition when college comes around.  But after college years pass it could haunt them much longer than they hoped.

While the plan has gotten students excited and seems to be off to a good start, it is so new that there will be a gap in waiting for students to graduate college to turn in their payment before the program can become self-sustaining.

To fix this, oregonwfp.org states that a start-up fund will be needed for the first generation of students participating in this program, possibly having to come from the country’s public funds.  Plus, students that don’t get high paying jobs won’t benefit the program because their income should be “paying forward” the cost of instruction for the next generation of students, according to inthesetimes.com.

Another disadvantage of this new program is that graduates who earn higher paying jobs will have to pay more money than others because the 3 percent requirement is a flat rate.

Collecting this money could also become a problem because former students will have to wire their bank accounts up with the program so it can “follow” them wherever they go for the next 20 years,according to inthesetimes.com.

The former students of this program will find jobs at different times of their lives, possibly change them from time to time, and the thought of the program being able to follow the rising complexity of it all is questionable.

With all the different accounts the program will have to keep up with problems are most likely to occur such as information getting lost, accounts getting mixed up, and the accidental extension or shortage of receiving an individual’s income.  The possible problems are endless.

While many students regret applying for loans, they do have the option of paying it off as soon as they can.

This program, on the other hand, forces one to pay for two decades of their life, whether they may like it or not. Students already have to deal with the uncertainties of life and what it brings, and three percent of their salary in the future could really financially hurt them.

The program puts a lot of trust in the students being able to find a job, but what if a participant is unemployed?

For those graduates who lose their jobs or never obtain one, they will not have to contribute to the program until they get a job, according to oregonwfp.org.  This will greatly affect the incoming students expecting the program to cover them.

The possibility of this in our current economy is very high, and would be chaotic for the program if it happened to many.

Obviously the problems with this emerging idea are not heading to the right direction of success. While it’s benefiting some, in the long run it will crash and fail.